1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to computer integrated manufacturing and, more particularly, to a system and method for integrating a computerized business system, a computerized manufacturing system, and a laboratory information management system.
2. Related Art
Recent developments in computer and computer-related technology have enabled the use of computers in numerous business applications. Almost every facet of today""s industry is implemented using computer systems in some manner. Computerization has become necessary for businesses to remain in a competitive posture.
Computer systems are used to automate processes, manage large quantities of information, and provide fast, flexible communications. One area enjoying widespread computerization is that of the business environment. Many businesses from small stores, to professional offices and partnerships, to large corporations have computerized their business functions to some extent. Computerized business functions can include billing, order-taking, scheduling, inventory control, record keeping, and the like. Such computerization can be accomplished by using a business applications system, running business applications software packages.
There are many business applications software packages available to handle a wide range of business functions, including those discussed above. One such package is the SAP R/2 System available from SAP America, Inc., 625 North Governor Printz Blvd., Essington, Pa. 19029.
The SAP R/2 System is a business applications software package designed to run on an IBM or compatible mainframe in a CICS (Customer Interface Control System) or IMS (Information Management System) environment. For example, SAP may use CICS to interface with terminals, printers, databases, or external communications facilities such as IBM""s Virtual Telecommunications Access Method (VTAM).
SAP is a modularized, table driven business applications software package that executes transactions to perform specified business functions. These functions may include order processing, inventory control, and invoice validation; financial accounting, planning, and related managerial control; production planning and control; and project accounting, planning, and control. The modules that perform these functions are all fully integrated with one another.
Another area that has been computerized is the manufacturing environment. Numerous manufacturing functions are now controlled by computer systems. Such functions can include real-time process control of discrete component manufacturing (such as in the automobile industry) and process manufacturing (such as chemical manufacturing through the use of real-time process control systems).
Directives communicated from the business systems to the manufacturing systems are commonly known as work orders. Work orders can include production orders, shipping orders, receiving orders, and the like.
However, the computerization of business systems within the business environment and the computerization of manufacturing systems within the manufacturing environment have followed separate evolutionary paths. This often results in an incompatibility between the different systems. Specifically, work orders communicated from the business systems may have a context and a format which are not readily compatible with the context and format recognized by the manufacturing systems. Additionally, the business systems may not provide all the information necessary for the manufacturing systems to carry out designated functions.
A third area that has benefited from computer automation is the laboratory environment. Computers are typically employed in a laboratory environment to manage data regarding samples of product undergoing quality testing. In addition, computers may be used to automate the testing and/or sampling processes. Such computer systems are commercially available and are generally known as Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS). One commercially-available LIMS system is FISONS LIMS from FISONS Instruments, Inc., 32 Commerce Center, Cherry Hill Dr., Danvers, Mass. 01923. Other commercially-available LIMS systems are SQL*LIMS from Perkin-Elmer and EASYLIMS from Beckman.
A modern manufacturing plant typically comprises a computerized business system, a computerized manufacturing system, and a LIMS. The inventor is not aware of a generic computerized solution that offers an efficient, automated way to integrate these three systems.
According to conventional wisdom, integrating computerized business systems, computerized manufacturing systems, and laboratory information management systems often requires a human interface. Consequently, a high degree of automation of plant operations is not accomplished, and neither is full automation of inventory, quality, and LIMS operations. In this solution, work orders are generated by the business systems indicating parameters such as: the product to be manufactured, the required date, the raw materials needed, and the like. Human operators receive the work order along with these parameters and manually prepare work order instructions that enable the computerized manufacturing systems to manufacture the product specified by the work order, and laboratory instructions that enable the LIMS to conduct sampling and sample testing. Human operators are also responsible for collecting data from the computerized manufacturing systems and the laboratory information management systems, matching corresponding data, and providing the matched data to the computerized business systems.
Another conventional solution is to implement a custom, computerized interface between the business systems, manufacturing systems, and laboratory systems. However, these custom solutions are usually tailored to a specific situation. As a result, the tailored solution is not portable into other situations without major modifications. Additionally, these solutions are costly to maintain over time because of inherent difficulties in accommodating change.
In many manufacturing plants, multiple real-time process control systems are implemented to control manufacturing. One problem with having multiple real-time process control systems is that all interfaces to those computers are not necessarily uniform. In such a situation, a process information system (also referred to as a process control supervisory computer) may be provided to serve as a consistent interface to multiple, real-time process control systems having different interface characteristics. The process information system allows operators to provide data to specific real-time process control systems and retrieve data about the manufacturing process from those real-time process control systems.
In typical manufacturing plants, there are diverse manufacturing situations calling for different solutions. These situations include characterizing manufacturing output as relating to either a period of time during which manufacturing occurs or a quantity of material is manufactured. In other words, output can be characterized with either time-based units or physical quantity units.
For the purpose of this document, these characterizations are described in terms of two types of manufacturing paradigms: lot manufacturing and continuous manufacturing. The lot manufacturing paradigm depicts manufacturing as producing a finite quantity of products in physical-quantity units such as lots. The lots manufactured may not be consistent from one manufacturing run to the next. The continuous manufacturing paradigm, on the other hand, depicts manufacturing as producing a theoretically consistent product over time in an ongoing manner. Both paradigms can be used to characterize the manufacturing output of a given plant in order to fulfill different business needs. A continuous plant can be defined as a theoretical implementation of the continuous paradigm. A lot plant can be defined as a theoretical implementation of the lot paradigm.
Continuous plants generally manufacture a fixed set of products, while lot plants are generally capable of being reconfigured to manufacture many different products using many different recipes. For continuous plants, the production unit can be described in terms of a set time frame. However, for lot plants, the unit of manufacture is not a set time frame. Instead, the unit of manufacture is a lot which can be defined by certain characteristics. These characteristics can include, for example, an event indicating the time of the start of the lot, an event indicating the time of the completion of the lot, a value indicating the magnitude of the lot, and other quality related attributes which are characteristic of all subparts or subdivisions of the lot.
Many lot plants use the same equipment to make several different products according to different recipes. Because different recipes are used and different product requirements exist for each lot, information handling requirements for each lot are different. In these plants, it is desirable to report different sets of manufacturing information for different recipes manufactured. In contrast, reporting requirements for continuous plants are usually ideally met by providing the same set of manufacturing data at regular, periodic intervals.
Apparently, conventional interfaces do not meet all of the needs for collecting, retrieving, and reporting data for a multitude of lot and continuous plants incorporating different real-time process control systems.
An example of a conventional solution is the DASS system, available from SAP AG, of Waldorf, Germany. The DASS system appears to be targeted at creating a manufacturing schedule rather than automatically creating a production order instruction and transmitting it to a real-time process control system. DASS receives information used in setting manufacturing schedules from the SAP R/2 package, and collects data from the real-time process control system to provide status information on those items scheduled. DASS does not appear to provide a mechanism for executing work orders whereby setpoints are computed and transmitted to the real-time process control systems in the computerized manufacturing system. Further, DASS does not appear to provide a generic solution to connect a computerized business system to a computerized manufacturing system which will collect data relating to the execution of work orders, and, therefore, does not appear to provide a comprehensive manufacturing execution system interface solution.
What is needed is a computerized interface between computerized business systems in the business environment, computerized manufacturing systems in the manufacturing environment, and laboratory information management systems in the laboratory environment that enables a true computer integrated manufacturing environment. The ideal computerized interface should be capable of handling the information needs of a full spectrum of manufacturing processes, and should be able to interface to a number of different real-time process control systems and laboratory systems.
The present invention is directed to a system and method for integrating the business systems of a corporation or business with its manufacturing systems and laboratory systems to enable computer integrated manufacturing. The present invention, a manufacturing execution system, provides an automated, multi-directional interface between at least one computerized business system, at least one computerized manufacturing system, and at least one laboratory information management system to achieve computer integrated manufacturing. As will be apparent to one skilled in the art, the present invention can also be employed to integrate any two types of the three types of systems.
A work order, specifying a manufacturing operation or a set of manufacturing operations, is created in the business system and distributed to the manufacturing execution system. The work order includes work order target data, which define the computerized business system""s expectation of what data will be generated in the manufacturing operations, and quality-related data, which can indicate what sort of quality testing is required.
The manufacturing execution system receives the work order and generates a work order instruction which also includes work order target data. To create a work order instruction, the manufacturing execution system translates the work order by mapping business system processing codes into manufacturing system codes. The manufacturing execution system expands the work order to include additional information required by the computerized manufacturing system in executing the work order. This expansion is known as enrichment.
In response to the work order, the manufacturing execution system further creates a manufacturing cycle order to identify data related to one manufacturing cycle to be executed on a specific workcenter. The manufacturing cycle order includes manufacturing cycle order target data which is an interpretation of manufacturing data within the work order instruction.
The manufacturing execution system also computes or determines setpoints to be included as attributes of the work order instruction. The setpoints comprise target values or other key information. The setpoints are input to a computerized manufacturing system which controls a manufacturing operation executing in the manufacturing environment.
The manufacturing execution system defines a set of configurable functions that can enable articulation of a plant model within the context of a generic workcenter. This generic model defines the data and relationships necessary to characterize a type of workcenter for a particular manufacturing operation. Attributes of specific workcenters within a generic workcenter type are then mapped into the generic definitions. This mapping facilitates interpretation of a work order instruction to a plurality of different types of real-time process control systems.
Once the work order instruction, including enrichment information and setpoints, is completed, the setpoints are communicated to the proper real-time process control system within the computerized manufacturing systems.
The communication can be released to the computerized manufacturing system in a manual or automatic manner depending on security and/or safety considerations. In one embodiment, the communication is automatically transmitted between the manufacturing execution system and the computerized manufacturing system.
The process control system within the computerized manufacturing system then executes manufacturing operations related to the work order. The execution is performed in accordance with parameters set forth by the setpoints.
During the execution of the manufacturing operation related to the work order instruction, the process control system generates manufacturing data regarding the execution. Upon receipt of specified triggering events, the manufacturing execution system retrieves related data and stores it in a local database. The manufacturing execution system uses this retrieved data to compute manufacturing process summary information required by the computerized business system. This information includes data concerning manufacturing in response to the work order such as raw materials used, amount of product manufactured, time to execute the manufacturing cycle, and the like.
A quality-related subset of the work order is passed to the computerized laboratory system; this subset, hereinafter referred to as sample correspondence data, contains information sufficient to enable the computerized laboratory system to conduct sampling and testing and to link the results to identifiers in the computerized business system and computerized manufacturing system. The sample correspondence data can comprise, for example, the lot number assigned to the lot of product to be tested and linking information.
The computerized laboratory system performs sampling and quality testing, if necessary. This process may be automated or human-implemented. The manufacturing execution system collects the results of sample testing from the computerized laboratory system and links the sample result data to the manufacturing process summary information.
The manufacturing execution system calculates data points based on the information received from the process control system and the computerized laboratory system. These data points include information such as lot quantities, lot qualities including final lot status, lot efficiencies, and the like. Some or all of these data points and the data received by the manufacturing execution system are organized for transmission to the business environment and for inclusion in reports. Reports are generated according to both standard and custom reporting formats.
The data computed and organized is transmitted to the computerized business system where it is used for plant business purposes such as computation and maintenance of accurate inventory information. The transmitted data provides the business environment with information regarding finished products manufactured, raw material consumption, and actual production times.
The manufacturing execution system operates by creating at least one manufacturing cycle order in response to a work order and its associated and derived work order instruction. The manufacturing execution system further creates additional manufacturing cycle orders if they are needed by the computerized manufacturing system to fulfill the work order.
A manufacturing cycle order, for example, may relate to one reactor load. Manufacturing cycle orders comprise scheduling information such as target dates and times and have manufacturing cycle order target data, such as raw materials reservations, linked to them. The manufacturing cycle order relates to a manufacturing cycle scheduled to execute on a certain workcenter at a certain time to fulfill a work order.
A generic data concept is provided which allows data for manufacturing processes, workcenters, materials, and other resources to be defined on a generic level. This allows a single instance of resource attribute definitions to apply to numerous specific resources within a genus. The use of a generic data concept to summarize data definitions saves storage space and reduces support and maintenance time. The generic data concept enables a group of workcenters having similar properties, design features, components, end products, raw materials, and attributes to inherit many of their individual (or specific) rules and associated data structures from a generic set of rules and associated data structures. This approach enables a new feature of the rules and data structures for the group of workcenters to be defined once at the generic level and applied to all specific workcenters in the group. A further feature of the generic data concept is provided through a material mapping facility which is further discussed in another part of this specification.
A computer-based system for integrating a computerized business system, a computerized manufacturing system, and a laboratory information management system is presented. The computerized business system creates a work order containing target data specifying a product to be manufactured and information regarding quality testing to be performed on the manufactured product. The computer-based system comprises a business systems interface configured to receive the work order from the computerized business system and to extract the target data from the received work order, and an event response processor coupled to the business system interface and configured to generate the setpoint by applying at least one rule to the target-data. The rule allows computation of a setpoint to meet specific requirements of the computerized manufacturing system. The computer-based system provides the quality-related data contained in the work order to the LIMS, where the manufactured product is sampled and quality tested. The computer-based system retrieves process information from the computerized manufacturing system and quality information from the LIMS, links the two to the manufactured product, makes a determination of the final status of the product, and passes this information to the computerized business system.
A computer-integrated manufacturing system is presented. The system comprises a computerized business system configured to create a work order having target data specifying a product to be manufactured, a computerized manufacturing system configured to manufacture the specified product in response to at least one setpoint, and an event response processor coupled to the computerized business system and the computerized manufacturing system, configured to generate said at least one setpoint by applying at least one rule to said target data and to provide the setpoint to the computerized manufacturing system. The rule allows computation of the setpoint to meet specific requirements of the computerized manufacturing system.
A computer-based method of integrating a computerized business system with a computerized manufacturing system is presented. The method comprises the steps of: (1) receiving a work order from the computerized business system, wherein the work order comprises target data specifying a product to be manufactured by the computerized manufacturing system; (2) applying at least one setpoint calculation rule to the target data to compute a setpoint, wherein the setpoint is used by the computerized manufacturing system to manufacture said specified product; and (3) sending the setpoint to the computerized manufacturing system.
A computer-based system for integrating a computerized business system with a computerized manufacturing system is presented. The system comprises:
(1) an interface means for receiving a work order from the computerized business system, wherein the work order comprises target data specifying a product to be manufactured by the computerized manufacturing system; and
(2) a setpoint determination means, coupled to the computerized manufacturing system, for applying at least one setpoint calculation rule to the target data to compute a setpoint required by the computerized manufacturing system to manufacture the specified product.
Further features and advantages of the present invention, as well as the structure and operation of various embodiments of the present invention, are described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings.